FBI Finds Buckets Of Chopped Body Parts, Cooler Of Male Genitalia At Arizona Center

The owner of a body-donation company in Phoenix, Arizona has again been sued, this time for illegally chopping-up and selling the body parts of persons whose dead bodies should have been donated for medical and scientific research.

Stephen Gore, owner of the Biological Resource Center (BRC) will be tried on Oct. 21 in Maricopa County Superior Court five years after FBI agents first raided his firm where they found the grisly results of Gore's handiwork.

FBI Phoenix special agent Mark Cwynar, who was present at that raid conducted in January 2014, said he saw "various unsettling scenes" when he and his fellow agents raided BRC, which has since been shut-down.

Cwynar said he saw many body parts piled on top of one another with no apparent identification to indicate what bodies they came from or to whom they belonged. He also saw a "cooler filled with male genitalia.”

There was also a "large torso with the head removed and replaced with a smaller head sewn together in a 'Frankenstein' manner."

The FBI's report of the raid was recently revealed in a civil lawsuit against Gore and his defunct business, according to azcentral.com.

In October 2015, a tearful Gore pleaded guilty to conducting an illegal enterprise after acknowledging he had provided vendors with contaminated human tissue and used body parts in ways that the donors had not permitted.

Gore was sentenced in December 2015 by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Warren Granville.

Now, 33 plaintiffs have sued BRC in a new lawsuit. They said the remains of their family members were obtained through "false statements." They pointed out body parts were being sold for profit to various middlemen, and that these body parts were not stored, treated or disposed of with dignity or respect.

Gore obtained the bodies from people that donated it to BRC. The company gave donors and their families’ free transportation services to pick-up the bodies and free cremation.

Some families thought a body "donation" meant their loved ones' bodies were being given to a charity to help with disease research. Others mistakenly thought BRC would donate their loved ones' organs, not realizing that organ donation and body donation aren’t the same thing.

Instead of doing all these, Gore (a high-school graduate with no formal medical training) chopped-up the bodies without the consent of the families of the deceased. He then sold the body parts for money.

Gore's grisly price list from 2013 shows how much money he made: whole body with no shoulders or head: $2,900; torso with head: $2,400; whole spine: $950; whole leg: $1,100; whole foot: $450; knee: $375; and pelvis: $400.

"I could have been more open about the process of donation on the brochure we put in public view," wrote Gore in 2014 before his sentencing.

"When deciding which donors could be eligible to donate, I should have hired a medical director rather than relying on medical knowledge from books or the internet."

Gore at the time confessed he didn't have any licenses or certifications applicable to body donation program operations.